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Strategies for using user-data folders in Windows 7?

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cmpm:
Keeping an index for searching these folders is convenient.
Using windows indexing I can open the 'Owner' folder and search.
Even AppData files are in it, 'show hidden files' will reveal that.
This is in case I don't know where a file went.
Though sometimes the file is in the program files for the app.
Some kind of standard is needed, or set your own when clicking save.
But some things don't give a choice on location I think.

My Documents gets crowded as apps create their own folders in it.

JavaJones:
Fair point, maybe an option on install wouldn't be great... then again I doubt 99% of users knew what to do with the networking prompts or perhaps some other ones on install of XP anyway, so perhaps installing the OS is, I dunno, an expert's thing to do in the first place? ;) After all 90% (yet another made up statistic, woo!) of end users (or more?) get their OS shipped pre-installed with their system.

Anyway I'll grant it's not an ideal solution. A better one would be an overhaul that eliminated the need for 2 partitions *on the same drive* just to separate data and applications. Partitions are not necessarily the best logical separation for these things, at least not as they're presently treated in Windows, e.g. showing as different drive letters. What about having a logical data "partition" accessible through drive manager and admin interfaces/tools, thus solving the data corruption and portability issue in the same way as current partitioning schemes, but still showing them as one drive for the lowest common denominator masses who, as Stoic Joker put it above, "...tend to panic if they are faced with more than one of something"

- Oshyan

Tekzel:
Personally, I like the direction they are going with them. They integrate well, generally that is, with third party apps and the data is always in an easy to find and easy to backup location. If you are unhappy with the default location in the users profile directory, just right click on the folder and move it using the location tab. Easy as pie. I have relocated my Downloads, Videos and Music folders to my WHS box, my Documents folder stays where it is and I have it synced nightly to a folder on the WHS box. I think its a good system they have built, by default it is well configured for the casual/new user, and the geek can do what they want.

Stoic Joker:
The thing that really needs to be asked/addressed here is what is being separated, and why. The OP states that: Every respectable backup guide these days will tell you that the most robust scenario, and one that will minimize the chance you will one day cry, is to keep your data well separated from the system and software.
--- End quote ---
Now while that is true, one needs to look at the context to really understand what it means. With a server there are performance concerns that require certain type of applications/data to be segregated to prevent fragmentation from bringing the whole shebang to a crawl. Which is why partitions are used to keep log files, databases, & etc. from scattering everything everywhere. So on a server where rapid restores are a must, the partition breaks make things less stressful. But, on a workstation, from a backup perspective, what does multiple partitions really gain you? In reality... nothing. Backup software does just fine following folder trees (and there's no real rush).

Manufacturers trying to out low-ball each other flooded the market with XP machines that had 256MB RAM, a "recovery" partition, and no install media. When the machines started getting a bit old, and XP memory requirements increased a bit, these machines unanimously celebrated by scuttling a hole in the drive right where the pagefile wasn't anymore. Sure, the recovery partition was "safe" on its own partition...but the drive was trashed which rendered it useless also. So keeping your data on a separate partition doesn't really in-and-of-itself solve anything. A separate physical disk, would, but that's not a cure-all either. All of the scuttled-to-death hard drives had one thing in common. They all trashed the pagefile's location, and My Documents was never an issue to recover.

So now you're thinking but viruses could eat my files...Yeah...and hiding them is going to help how? The last really aggressive file eater was Snow white; it ate a very large segment of CBS's archives...which I'm reasonably sure were not in anybodies My Documents folder. Hiding your porn stash might keep mom out of it...but a really aggressive bug, will only take a few milliseconds more before it starts chewing up your stash. In which case software based "real-Time" mirroring, only guarantees that you will have two identical copies of the same damaged file.

Other random "incidents" - Well if you really knew better ... it wouldn't have happened in the first place. But that's kinda the point of backing up (on a regular schedule) to external media. Not to mention that "emergency" reinstalls do not actually require formatting the drive, so even if I do manage to hose the OS I'm still not going to lose anything (parallel installs are quite easy).

Sure nobody's perfect, and anything I have that is extremely critical gets a multi-site backup. Once to my server, and once to the office server. The rest is just backed up to the (local) server.

Do I keep my documents in the default location? No it is on a separate working partition. But that is solely a maintenance issue driven by the high level of fragmentation caused by some of my activities. This allows the contents of the OS partition to remain a bit more static (Circular fixed size logs don't change size).


One thing I thought to add is that mirroring or any other RAID based disk configuration are only availability solutions that prevent the need for downtime and a restore operation if a disk fails, which maximizes uptime. They do not replace or even mitigate the need for a regularly scheduled back to external media.

f0dder:
What about having a logical data "partition" accessible through drive manager and admin interfaces/tools, thus solving the data corruption and portability issue in the same way as current partitioning schemes, but still showing them as one drive for the lowest common denominator masses who, as Stoic Joker put it above, "...tend to panic if they are faced with more than one of something"-JavaJones (January 20, 2010, 02:37 PM)
--- End quote ---
This has been possible for quite a while (iirc introduced with Win2k?) - using NTFS junctions, you can mount a partition pretty much anywhere in the filesystem, and you can even do this from diskmgmt.msc without having to bother with console apps. It's still GeekBoyPowerHead though, each partition has to have a separate mount point (ie, it's not a "fusion" filesystem wrapper), and some applications don't handle them properly (mostly only a problem with some file managers and backup tools, though).

Stoic Joker: while I agree with a bunch of your points, keeping OS+apps and data on separate partitions (on same drive) still has a lot of value for several people. Disk images are smaller that way, and it's much easier to do a restore (or fresh reinstall) as well, when you can format your system partition without losing your data partition :)

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